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CELEBRATION 



OF / I <J 



JEFFERSON'S BIETHDAY 



IN WASHINGTON. 



WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1859- 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

BUELL & BLANCHARD, PRINTERS. 
1859. 



MH. BL^IU'S ADDRESS. 



The friends of Freedom in Washington, under 
ihe auspices of the Republican Association, 
celebrated the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, 
on Wednesday, the loth instant, with great 
spirit and enthusiasm. In the afternoon, one 
hundred guns were fired, partly in honor of the 
day, and also in celebration of the recent Re- 
publican triumphs in Connecticut, Rhode 
Island, Missouri, Michigan, and other States^ 

In the evening, a large audience assembled 
at Odd Fellows Hall, to hear an oration in 
memory of the life, character, and principles of 
Mr. Jefferson. The occasion was enlivened by 
the presence of the Marine Band, which played 
national and patriotic airs at the intervals in 
the proceedings. Francis P. Blair, sgn., Esq., 
presided, and introduced the proceedings by 
the following address, which briefly and per- 
spicuously sets forth the nature and objects of 
the Republican organieation. 

Gentlemen : There never was a more pro- 
pitious moment than the present to revive the 
recollection of the principles and Administra- 
tion of Jefferson. When a spurious currency 
has filled the channels of circulation, it can 
only be expelled by putting it in competition 
with the real standard of value. We have a 
party in power who affect to represent Mr. Jef- 
ferson, and carry out his doctrines in the con- 
duct of the Government. They take the name 
of National Democrats. The Republican party 
have brought this " counterfeit presentment " 
of the true faith which Mr. Jefferson inculcated 
to the test in the measures they have submitted 
to the country, to restore the original princi- 
ples of the Government 



I propose, as a preface to the proceedings of 
this meeting, to present a naked schedule of 
the acts of the National Democracy, in contrast 
with the measures urged by their Republican 
adversaries, and compare both with Jefferson's 
standard. 

The Democrats now deride the name of Re- 
publicans. This, we learn from Jefferson's 
Anas, was, at the threshold of Washington's Ad- 
ministration, a name which excited some re- 
pugnance in Wiishiugton, when used in some 
document prepared for him by Jefferson. Re- 
public, Washington held to be the true title of 
our national institution. But it was doubtless 
obnoxious to that section of Washington's 
Cabinet which held the French Republic in 
odium, and employed the disagreeable associa- 
tion to prejudice him against its designation, 
as reccommended by Jefferson. Washington 
adopted, finally, the name preferred by Jefferson, 
in his own official communications to Congress. 
The oppouents of the present Administration 
would restore the glory of the term which 
Jefferson suggested, and which Washington 
adopted, but which the oligarchs of that time 
and of this disavow and endeavor to bring into 
contempt. 

2. Jefferson held that " Governments are re- 
publican only in proportion, as they embody the 
will of the people, and execute it.''^ 

This is the true definition of popular sover- 
eignty under our form of Government. It has 
been the constant aim of the National Democ- 
racy to stifle the principle, while professing to 
adopt it. The leaders of the party and its 
successive administrations have been the ac- 
complices of all the fraud, violence, and cor- 
ruption, which have during six years been em- 
ployed, not only to defeat the will of the people 
of Kansas, but the will of the nation, in refer- 



ence to the establishment of Slavery in that 
Territory, and that west and south of Kansas. 
The Republicans have fought the battle for the 
rights of the people there, and throughout the 
Tjnion, and in the neighboring nations. 

3. Jefferson was in favor of "general suf- 
frage," and " equal representation in the Legis- 
lature." The Democratic party, in its new 
pledge, commits itself to the doctrines of that 
party in the South which subjects suffrage to 
the slaveholding oligarchy ; that power render- 
ing the popular vote for the most part nugatory, 
by gerrymandering the States, so as to give the 
strong negro districts absolute preponderance 
in the State Governments ; the result being, on 
the whole, the monopoly of the soil by means 
of the monopoly of slave labor ; unequal rep- 
resentation, in consequence of the control of 
the suffrage of the poor; a monopoly of all the 
official power in the hands of the caste holding 
slaves, and the disfranchisement of the great 
mass of the people holding none. 

4. Jefferson was opposed to an irresponsible 
Judiciary, and denied the right of the bench of 
judges to decide political questions for the na- 
tion, and to the obligation of the co-ordinate 
department of the Government to submit them- 
selves to the construction of the Constitution 
imposed by the court. The Democratic party 
and Administration deny this doctrine, and 
hold the obiter dictum of the Supreme Court, 
that this country can have no colonies, as a 
part of the Constitution ; and its decision, that 
Slavery is the law of the Territories in virtue of 
the Constitution, and in spite of National Ter- 
ritorial legislation, is conclusive to make it the 
duty of both to protect it there as an inviolable 
institution. The reasoning renders this de- 
cision as applicable to States as to Territories. 
The Republicans hold Jefferson's opinion, that 
the decision of the court is not obligatory on 
Congress or the country, and may be rightfully 
opposed and reversed. 

5. Jefferson considered the security and pu- 
rity of the elective franchise as the basis of 
representative institutions. The Democratic 
party and its successive Administrations have 
practiced upon a wholly different principle. 
They assess the office-holders here and through- 
out the Union, to raise means to corrupt the 
elections. They give contracts to individuals 
who advance money to carry the elections — 
and this in opposition to the law giving con- 
tracts to the lowest bidders. They use the pub- 
lic money to enlist multitudes of laborers, not 
required by the service, and pay them as voters : 
colonizing them in navy yards and other na- 
tional establishments, where they may hold the 
balance between the contending parties in 
elections. They corrupt members of Congress, 
not only by the use thus made of public money 
to control elections, but by authorizing them to 
sell_ contracts and dispose of public offices, 
taking a premium for the negotiation. The 
Republicans, in the committees that have 



brought these abuses to light, denounce them, 
and propose their correction. The Democrats 
apologize for the offenders, and labor to screen 
them. 

6. Jefferson maintains State Rights as a bar- 
rier against a consolidated government. The 
President, Senate, and Judiciary — the power 
of the Democracy in the Government — con- 
spire to sacrifice the rights of the States, by 
the construction they impose on the Constitu- 
tion. AVith them, the States can have no rights 
but those admitted by the Supreme Court. 
The Senate, too, has, in the case of Bright and 
Fitch, assumed power to defeat the right of a 
State to choose its own Senators, and substi- 
tute Senators, by a party vote of a majority of 
the Senate itself, for those elected by the Legis- 
lature of the State. In the case of Harlan, it 
excluded a Senator chosen by a joint meeting 
of the Legislature of Iowa, called by both 
branches, on the pretext that a majority of 
both branches did not participate in the elec- 
tion. In the case of Bright and Fitch they as- 
sumed that a majority vote in one branch of 
the Legislature made a legal election, although 
the majority of the other branch not only re- 
fused to make a joint meeting to go into the 
election, but protested against it. The people 
of Indiana were appealed to, to vindicate the 
the State against this assumption of the Senate 
of the United States. They maintained the 
right of the State Legislature to elect Senators 
to supplaut those chosen by only one Legisla- 
tive branch, and both branches of the new 
Legislature united to elect Senators. The 
Senators of Indiana were refused even a hear- 
ing before the usurping majority in the L^nited 
States Senate, and thus it has in effect appoint- 
ed Senators for the State of Indiana against its 
will. 

7. Jefferson was in favor of the diffusion of 
knowledge. This is marked by his effort to get 
the counties divided into townships, with a view 
to have primary schools in each. The hostility 
of the Democracy to the diffusion of knowledge 
is marked by the neglect in all the States of 
the South, which give law to the Democracy, to 
establish primary schools, and by the late veto 
of the President, at the behest of that party, 
put on the bill making a large grant of land to 
each of the States of the Union, to establish 
schools to diffuse knowledge among the people. 

8. Jefferson inscribed his character as a 
friend to free labor on the Ordinance of l^S*", 
reserving the whole public domain then ac- 
quired, for those who lived by it. The Democ- 
racy has inscribed its character, in reference to 
free labor, in the Kansas-Nebraska act, the 
Lecompton Constitution, and the judicial de- 
cision opening all the Territories to Slavery. 

9. Jefferson advocated the division of' the 
lands among small freeholders, and favored 
little tenements rather than great domains. 
The strangling of the Homestead bill in the 
Senate, which was carried by the united Re- 



publican vote of the House, discriminates the 
enemies from the advocates of the Jefferson 
party. 

10. It was Jeffei'son's apothegm, "We must 
make our election between economy and lib- 
erty, or profusion and servitude." The present 
Administration has more than doubled the ex- 
penditures of Mr. Van Buren's Administration. 

11. Mr. Jefferson abhorred a public debt. 
Enumerating the dangers which threatened 
free government, he said, " the fore horse of 
this frightful team is a public debt." 

The Government party has in two years sunk 
a large surplus in the Treasury, and created a 
public debt. Its new measures look to a lai-ge 
accumulation of it, showing that a national 
debt is a part of their system of policy. The 
extinction of the public debt, and provision 
against the organization of another, is the poli- 
cy of the Kepublicans. 

12. It was a cardinal principle in politics 
with Jefferson, tliat Slavery begets Shifeiy. He 
therefore maintained the necessity of the grad- 
ual extinction of Slavery ; and the removal of 
the subject caste is indispensable to the preser- 
vation of the liberties of the whole laboring 
class, and the preservation of .the Republican 
form of government. It is the policy of the 
National Democratic party to preserve and ex- 
tend Slavery, as an institution replete with 
blessings to mankind, and essential to the glory 
of our Government. It is on this main issue 
that the Republican party go with Jefferson 
against the National Democracy, and submit 
the trial to the country. 

I might extend indefinitely this catalogue of 
antagonisms between the policy of Jefferson 
and that of the present enslaved Administra- 
tion. There is, indeed, nothing in common be- 
tween the^i ; and there could be, in the nature 
of things, no agreement in any essential point 
between Mr. Jefferson, who was the apostle of 
Freedom and Equality, and a party deriving its 
power from Slavery, and bent on extending and 
perpetuating it. Nor do they conceal their 
malice at every encounter with the principles or 
suggestions of policy which he has left to pos- 
terity. 

But it does not follow, because the oligarch- 
ists hate Jefferson, and know that their schemes 
are utterly repugnant to his principles, that they 
will not seek to draw support to themselves by 
perverting his language and acts. Not at all. 



They depend mainly upon imposture and fraua 
to maintain their power ; and those who obtain 
power wrongfully, and undertake wicked and 
illegal enterprises to extend it, are not scrupu- 
lous in adopting devices to gloss over their 
schemes, or in endeavoring to assimilate them 
to the approved acts of public benefactors. It 
is for this reason that, whilst hating the name 
of Jefferson, and opposing in every form his 
policy of elevating the masses by making all 
men free, providing for their education, and 
enabling them to have freeholds, the oligarch- 
ists are now attempting to assimilate their de- 
signs against Cuba to Mr. Jefferson's acquisi- 
tion of Louisiana. It is a shallow device. A 
mere glance at what Mr. Jefferson did, and 
proposed to do, as compared with what they 
propose to do, will show that in this, as on any 
other point of their 'policy, they are utterly an- 
tagonistic to the views and ol)jects of Mr. Jef- 
ferson. Mr. Jefferson, in the purchase of Lou- 
isiana, acquired for $15,000,000 half a conti- 
nent of rich vacant domain, to be planted with 
free States. They propose to give hundreds of 
millions for an island covered with slaves, to be 
secured by a standing army, and looking finally 
to the creation of an Empire founded on com- 
pulsory labor throughout all the tropics. Mr. 
Jefferson, on the contrary, looked to that region 
as the place where free homes were to be ac- 
quired for the colored people anaong us, to ful- 
fill his cherished scheme of separating the races, 
which he regarded as csential to the Freedom 
of either. The result of the projected conquest 
of Cuba will be the renewal of the slave trade, 
to bring Africa in chains to the work of the 
West Indies, whilst the poor caste of the white 
race in our Southern regions are to be convert- 
ed into a soldiery to maintain the process. 
This mode of acquisition bodes war with for- 
eign Powers, a separation of the Union, and, if 
the v.dld hopes of the projectors could be ac- 
complished, would renew around the Gulf of 
Mexico a' sort of Turkish domain, like that 
which once embraced the Mediterranean in its 
bosom. These Saracens of the South, who 
would propagate Slavery with the sword, must 
expect a crusade against this scheme, by all 
the nations of the New AVorld that love Free- 
dom. Peace was the object and the result of 
Mr. Jefferson's acquisition, under the banner 
of Liberty. War, civil and servile, must follow in 
the train of this new project to extend Slavery. 



EEADIIS'G OF THE DECLARATION OF EN^DEPEIs^DENCE. 



After a fine piece of music from the baud, 
Mr. Blair inti-oduced Major Benjamin B. French 
as the person selected to read the Declaration 
of Independence. 

Mr. French prefaced the reading of that 
cherished paper with the following remarks : 

My Friends and Fellow Citizens : 

About eighty-three years ago, the hand of 
the man the anniversary of whose birth we 
meet here this evening to celebrate, was en- 
gaged in writing one of the most remai'kable 
papers which ever emanated from mortal brain. 
It was the (jreat charier of our Liberties — our 
Declaration of Independence. 

On the fourth of July, 1T76, that glorious 
Declaration was unanimously adopted by the 
Congress of the United Colonies, and this Na- 
tion assumed its rank among the Nations of 
the earth as '' the United States of America." 

On that day, or immediately subsequent 
thereto, that Declaration received "the signatures 



of fifty-six men — brave, determined, resolute — 
men who had declared their rights, and, at all 
hazards, were determined to maintain them — 
men whom we may well be proud to call our 
political fathei-s, and whose like we ne'er shall 
look upon again. 

That Declaration emanated from the brain 
and came from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, 
well and truly designated as " the great Apostle 
of Liberty,"' whose republican principles we 
adopt, whose memory we revere, and the anni- 
versary of whose birth we have met here to 
commemorate. 

Most appropriate and most proper, then, it is 
that we should listen to that Declaration ; and 
the welcome duty of reading it has been as- 
signed to me, which I shall now proceed to 
perform. 

Mr. French then, in a clear and audible voice, 
and with much emphasis, read the Declaration 
of Independence. (Mr. French's remarks and 
the reading were received with applause.) 



MR. GOODLOE'S ORATION. 



After another air from the band, the Chair- 
man introduced to the audience Mr. Daniel R. 
Goodloe, of North Carolina, who proceeded to 
deliver the following oration : 
Mr. Chairman, and Ladies and Gentlemen : 

The name of Jefferson is familiar to you as 
" household words," and it would be super- 
fluous to recount in detail the events of his 
life. He was born at a place called Shadwell, 
in what is now the fine county of Albemarle, 
on the 2d of April, 1743, old style ; which cor- 
responds to the loth, under the new computa- 
tion of time. He was educated at William 
and Mary College, whose venerable walls have 
been consumed by fire during the present year. 
His education, in the judgment of modern 
critics, was most thorough, and he continued to 
add to his stores of knowledge, scientific and 
literary, as well as political, until the day of his 
death. 



Like most young Virginians of opportunity 
and ambition, he read the law, and was admit- 
ted to the bar. He pursued the study and prac- 
tice with avidity for some years, and was 
rapidly rising into reputation, when his zeal in 
behalf of his country and its liberties diverted 
him from the law, and absorbed him in politics. 
He was never distinguished as a public speak- 
er. Few men have been more celebrated for 
conversational eloquence than Mr. Jefferson ; 
but his voice is said to have lacked compass 
and strength for public speaking. His natural 
diffidence was also an impediment to his suc- 
cess in oratory ; and like Franklin, Washing- 
ton, and other great men, he was rather dis- 
tinguished for wisdom and weight of chai-acter, 
than for the faculty of moving the passions of 
men by displays of oratory. In this country, 
where the gift of public speaking is so com- 
mon, and where good oratory is not rare, we 
can forgive Nature, if Nature were to blauvt, 



for denying to a mind like Jefferson's the 
charm of oratory ; and it may well be doubted 
if the laurels of the orator would not have been 
taken from the brow of the philosophic states- 
man. Nature cannot afford to give all her 
choice gifts of genius to one mind. To one she 
gives the pre-eminent endowment of thought, 
to another action, to another oratory. It is the 
glory of Jefferson to have been the philosopher 
of the Revolution — excelling even Franklin in 
this respect ; for Franklin, with all his match- 
less powers, had dedicated them to the ad- 
vancement of physical science, long before the 
events which led to the Revolution had trans- 
pired. 

Mr. Jefferson grew up and his mind matured 
in the midst of these stirring events. His pa- 
* triotic enthusiasm was aroused, and he was 
among the lirst to take sides with his country 
against the Crown and Parliament of England. 
I will not weary you with a recital of the vari- 
ous political functions which he filled, much 
less shall I attempt to show the important part 
which he played on the public stage ; it will be 
sufficient for my purpose to touch upon the 
salient points of his public life, in order to show 
the identity of modern Republicanism with the 
principles of Mr. Jefferson. ■ 

This will be my object on the present occa- 
sion : and I will at the same time show that 
no other party in this country has any affinity 
with Jefferson. I make no arrogant boast; the 
task is easy. Any man of common intelligence, 
who will read twenty or thirty pages of Jeffer- 
son's writings, and contrast them with the po- 
litical history of the last two or ten years, can 
do the same thing, 

I will not confine my examination of the 
political principles of Jefferson to the subject 
of Slavery ; I intend to show that his views of 
State Rights, and of the relative power of the 
State and Federal Governments, are in har- 
mony with those of the Republican party ; 
while the party now in power is thoroughly 
committed, in word and deed, to the most ulti-a 
Federalism, 

I begin, however, with the Slavery question, 
because that is the great issue before the coun- 
try ; the great issue which has been the nucleus 
and centre of the Republican party, and which 
has at the same time been the rock which has 
shattered all other parties to atoms. 

Let me first briefly state the principles and 
objects of this new party. 

The Repuljlican party has proposed no in- 
vasion of the rights of the States — no intermed- 
ling by Congress with Slavery in the States ; 
but it insists upon the right of Congress to ex- 
clude Slavery from the Territories, to conse- 
crate them to free white labor, and to rear upon 
them States constituted, not of a handful of 
wealthy slaveholders, surrounded by thousands 
of black slaves, but States composed of free- 
men, white men, who will give invincible 
strength to the nation. 



The Republican party also insists upon the 
right of freedom of speech and of the press. It 
insists upon, and when it attains the control of the 
Federal Government it will encourage, that sort 
of freedom of speech in all the South which for 
two or three years has existed in St. Louis, and 
whose fruits have been more than one triumph- 
ant election. 

The Republican party is not in favor of the 
amalgamation of the white and black races, 
nor of a population composed of two separate 
races. Nine-tenths of its members, while they 
condemn the injustice which enslaves the black 
man, are anxious for his colonization, in Africa, 
in Mexico, in Central America, in South Amer- 
ica, or in the West Indies. That party will 
favor the colonization of the free people of color 
and emancipated slaves, with their own con- 
sent, in any of these countries, and a proposi- 
tion to this effect has been made in each branch 
of Congress, by distinguished Republicans. 

I intend to show, that in every one of these 
principles and proposed measures the Repub- 
lican party of the present day is only treading 
in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson — only pro- 
posing to carry out his principles and meas- 
ures — only endeavoring to realize the dream of 
his life. 

It would be equally as easy to show that In 
this leading feature of the Republican platform 
it has the sanction of nearly every great and 
good name which achieved renown during the 
Revolution, whether in the field or in the coun- 
cil. It would be easy to quote Washington, 
Franklin, Madison, the Adamses, the Ran- 
dolphs, Mason, Henry, Pinckney, in support of 
the Republican principles above laid down ; but 
I shall have enough to do at present to use the 
materials furnished by the writings of Jefferson 
himself. 

Democracy with Mr. Jefferson was a synonym 
for universal freedom. The first sentence of 
the Declaration of Independence is demonstra- 
tive of this truth. It declares that " all men 
are created equal,"' and "endowed by their 
Creator with certain unalienable rights, among 
which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness." lam aware that it has been main- 
tained by desperate demagogues that this dec- 
laration of rights was not intended to embrace 
black men ; but there exists the most abundant 
testimony to the contrary. Mr. Jefferson was 
fully committed to the universality of Freedom 
before he became a member of the Continental 
Congress, In his celebrated paper on the 
" Rights of British America," prepared wbib 
he was a member of the General Assembly of 
Virginia, and published in ll^-i, he says:. 

" The abolition of domestic Slavery is the 
greatest object of desire in these Colonies, 
where it was unhappily introduced in their, in-- 
fant state." 

In his original draft of the Declaration, of 

Independence he used the following language : 

"He" (the King) "has waged ctuel war 



10 



Democratic party still clings? Let us see. 
There is the question of State rights. This 
principle is multiform in its applications. Jef- 
ferson and his party employed it to resist the 
alien and sedition laws. Calhoun and South 
Carolina revived it for the purpose of resisting 
what they donouuced as an odious and uncon- 
stitutional scale of tariff duties, designed not for 
revenue, but for protection to American pro- 
ducers, at the expense of the consumers. Wis- 
consin, Vermont, and Massachusetts, are ap- 
plying it to the nullification of the fugitive slave 
law, which they insist, and which Mr. Webster, 
Mr. Rhett of South Carolina, and the Charles- 
ton Mercury, declared to be, in their judgments, 
unwarranted by the Constitution. I shall not 
stop to defend or to criticise any of these ap- 
plications of the principles of State Rights. 
My object is to show what those principles are. 

The doctrine, as defined by Mr. Jefferson, may 
be briefly stated thus, viz : the States having 
reserved to themselves all powers not specifi- 
cally granted to the Federal Government, and 
the Constitution being a compact among the 
States, the right to judge of its infringe- 
ment belongs to the States themselves. If 
the sole power of determining constitutional 
questions is surrendered to the Federal Gov- 
ernment, or to any one of its departments, the 
effect is to surrender all independence on the 
part of the States, and they are forever bound 
hand and foot by the decisions of the Supreme 
Federal tribunal. The Federal Government is 
itself the creature of the States, and the Su- 
preme Court is the creature of the Federal Gov- 
ernment ; hence, to make the Supreme Court 
the final arbiter of constitutional questions, is 
to subordinate the creators to their creature's 
creature. So reasoned Jefferson and John 
Taylor of Caroline, and so believed the Re- 
publican party of their day. 

In order that I may place this matter clearly 
before you, I will read to you extracts from 
Mr. Jefferson's writings, and then I propose to 
contrast with them the more recent teachings 
of the so-called Democratic party. 

In the 9th volume of Mr. Jefferson's Works, 
at page 464, 1 find a series of resolutions which 
the compiler of his Works thinks were the orig- 
inal of the famous Kentucky resolutions of 
1799. The Virginia resolutions of 1798, of 
which you have heard so much, were from the 
pen of Mr. Madison ; and they are substantially 
the same as those written by Mr. Jefferson for 
Kentucky. The first of these is as follows : 

" 1. liesolved, That the several States com- 
posing the United States of America are not 
united on the principle of unlimited submission 
to their General Government, but that by a 
compact, under the syle and title of a Consti- 
tution for the United States, and of amend- 
ments thereto, they constituted a General Gov- 
ernment for special purposes— delegated to that 
Government certain definite powers, reserving, 
each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to 



their own self-government ; and that whensoever 
the General Government assumes undelegated 
powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and 
of no force ; that to this compact each State 
acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its 
co-States forming, as to itself, the other party ; 
that the Government created by this compact 
was not made the exclusive or final judge of 
the extent of the powers delegated to itself, 
since that would have made its discretion, and 
not the Constitution, the measure of its powers ; 
but that, as in all other cases of compact 
among Powers having no common judge, each 
party has an equal right to judge for itself as 
well of infractions as of the measure and modS 
of redress." 

So much for Mr. Jefferson's general view of 
the relations of the States to the Federal Gov- 
ernment. I will next read from his letters, to 
show what he thought of the Supreme Court, 
which President Buchanan and his followers 
have apotheosized since its determination of the 
Dred Scott case. 

In a letter to W. H. Torrance, dated Monti- 
cello, June 11, 1815, Mr. Je&ersou says: 

" The second question, whether the judges 
are invested with exclusive authority to decide 
on the constitutionality of a law, has been here- 
tofore a subject of consideration with me in the 
exercise of oflicial duties. Certainly there is 
not a Avord in the Constitution which has given 
that power to Ihem, more than to the Executive 
or Legislative branches. Questions of property, 
of charactei', and of crime, being ascribed to 
the judges through a definite course of legal 
procedure, laws involving such questions be- 
long, of course, to them ; and as they decide on 
them ultimately, and without appeal, they of 
course decide for iJiemselccs. The constitution- 
al validity of the law or laws again prescribing 
Executive action, and to be administered by 
that branch ultimately, and without appeal, 
the Executive must decide for themselves also, 
whether under the Constitution they are valid 
or not. So also as to the laws governing the 
proceedings of the Legislature, that body must 
judge _/br itself the constitutionality of the law, 
and equally without appeal or control from its 
co-ordinate branches. And, in general, the 
branch which is to act ultimately, and without 
appeal, on any law, is the rightful expositor of 
the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the 
opinions of the other co-ordinate authorities. 
It may be said that contradictory decisions may 
arise in such case, and pi-oduce inconveuieuce. 
This is possible, and is a necessary failing in 
all human proceedings. Yet the prudence of 
the public functionaries and authority of pub- 
lic opinion will generally produce accommoda- 
tion." — Jeffersoii's Complete Works, vol. G, pages 
GGl, GG2. 

It would be difficult to find two theories of 
the Constitution more widely different than 
this one of Jefferson, and that of President 
Buchanan, as laid down in his inaugural, his 



11 



Silliman letter, and his messages In regard to 
Kansas. But I will come to that presently. 

On this subject of the power of the Supreme 
Court, numbers of Mr. Jefferson's letters might 
be quoted, to the same purport as the above. 
I have only time to present brief extracts. In 
a letter to Judge Koane, dated Poplar Forest, 
September 6, 1819, he says, referring to the 
Supreme Court: 

" In denying the right they usurp, of exclu- 
sively explaining the Constitution, I go further 
than you do, if I understand rightly your quo- 
tation from the Federalist of an opinion that 
'the Judiciary is the last resort in relation to 
the other departments of the Government, but 
not in relation to the rights of the parties to 
the compact under which the Judiciary is de- 
rived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed 
is our Constitution a complete ^eZo de se. For, 
intending to establish three departments, co- 
ordinate and independent, that they might 
check and balance one another, it has given, 
according to this opinion, to one of them alone 
the right to prescribe rules for the government 
of the others, and to that one, too, which is un- 
elected by, and independent of, the nation." 

* * * " The Constitution, on this hy- 
pothesis, is a mere thing of wax, in the hands 
of the Judiciary, which they may twist and 
shape into any form they please. It should be 
remembered as an axiom of eternal truth in 
politics, that whatever power in any Govern- 
ment is independent, is absolute also ; in theory 
only at first, while the spirit of the people is 
up, but in practice as fast as that relaxes. In- 
dependence can be trusted nowhere but with 
the people in mass. They are inherently inde- 
pendent of all but moral law."' 

To Thomas Ritchie, whose name as the ed- 
itor of the Richmond Enquirer is familiar to us 
all, Mr. Jefferson wrote, under date of Decem- 
ber 25, 1820, as follows: 

" The Judiciary of the United States is the 
subtle corps of sappers and miners, constantly 
working under ground to undermine the found- 
ations of our confederated fabric. They are 
construing our Constitution from a co-ordina- 
tion of a general and special Government, to a 
general and supreme one alone." 

I should weary you if I were to quote a tithe 
of what Mr. Jefferson has left us on this subject. 
"What I have presented will suffice to show you 
that he entertained a deep-seated jealousy of 
Federal encroachments upon the rights of the 
States, and that he utterly repudiated the mod- 
ern doctrine of the party which claims to be 
Democratic, that the Supreme Court is the final 
arbiter of constitutional questions. 

I now present the views of the modern De- 
mocracy touching these qtiestions of constitu- 
tional power and the authority of the Supreme 
Court. I know that the President has fallen 
into disrepute with large sections of his party ; 
but, inasmuch as the sentiments advanced in 
his inaugural, in his Silliman letter, and in his 



first annual message, were universally applaud- 
ed. North and South, as the very perfection 
of human wisdom and statesmanship, I make 
bold to asstime that the passages which I shall 
quote from these documents express the settled 
principles of the Democratic party. In his in- 
augural, delivered March 4, 1857, the President 
says: 

" A difference of opinion has arisen in regard 
to the point of time when the people of a Terri- 
tory shall decide this question (meaning Sla- 
very) for themselves. 

" This is, happily, a matter of but little prac- 
tical importance. Besides, it is a judicial ques- 
tion, which legitimately belongs to the Supreme 
Court of the United States, before whom it is 
now pending, and will, it is understood, be 
speedily andjinalhj settled. To their decision, 
in common with all good citizens, I shall cheer- 
fully submit, whatever this may be, though it 
has ever been my individual opinion that, under 
the Nebraska-Kansas act, the appropriate pe- 
riod will be when the number of actual resi- 
dents in the Territory shall justify the forma- 
tion of a Constitution with a view to its admis- 
sion as a State into the Union." 

Mr. Jefferson contended that the co-ordinate 
branches of the Government — that is to say, the 
Executive, the two Houses of Congress, and the 
Supreme Court — have each the right of judg- 
ing for themselves of the constitutionality of 
questioHs; that the States severally have the 
same right ; and that the people at large are to 
be the final arbiters. But, according to our 
modern oracle of Democracy, the people are 
bound, like obedient subjects, to submit at dis- 
cretion to the decision of the Supreme Court. 
The President sets them the example, by sur- 
rendering the Executive authority to what Mr. 
Jefferson describes as "the subtle corps of sap- 
pers and miners," who are at work night and 
day in the effort to overthrow the Constitution, 
and convert the Federal Government into a 
despotism. 

In the President's letter to Professor Silli- 
man, dated August 15, 1857, he uses the fol- 
lowing language : " Slavery existed at that pe- 
rio(?, (that is to say, when the Nebraska bill 
was passed,) and still exists, in Kansas, under 
the Constitution of the United States. This 
point has at last been finally settled, by the 
highest tribunal known to our laws.'' 

Here, again, the President sets the Supreme 
Court above the Executive, above the Congress, 
and above the people. He reiterates the senti- 
ments of his inaugural ; and the party, from 
Maine to Texas, cry amen, and denounce as 
traitors all who dare question the truth of the 
President's views. The files of the Virginia 
papers, and even those of South Carolina, fur 
two or three months after the date of this let- 
ter, teem with laudations of it, and fully en- 
dorse its ultra Federal sentiments. 

I know that whenever the States Rights prin- 
ciples of Mr. JclTerson happen to chime in with 



10 



Democratic party still clings ? Let us see. 
There is the question of State rights. This 
principle is multiform in its applications. Jef- 
ferson and his party employed it to resist the 
alien and sedition laws. Calhoun and South 
Carolina revived it for the purpose of resisting 
Avhat they donounced as an odious and uncon- 
stitutional scale of tariff duties, designed not for 
revenue, but for protection to American pro- 
ducers, at the expense of the consumers. Wis- 
consin, Vermont, and Massachusetts, are ap- 
pilying it to the nullification of the fugitive slave 
law, which they insist, and which Mr. Webster, 
Mr. Rhett of South Carolina, and the Charles- 
ton MerczDy, declared to be, in their judgments, 
unwarranted by the Constitution. I shall not 
stop to defend or to criticise any of these ap- 
plications of the principles of State Rights. 
My object is to show what those principles are. 

The doctrine, as defined by Mr. Jeffei'son, may 
be briefly stated thus, viz : the States having 
reserved to themselves all powers not specifi- 
cally granted to the Federal Government, and 
the Constitution being a compact among the 
States, the right to judge of its infringe- 
ment belongs to the States themselves. If 
the sole power of determining constitutional 
questions is surrendered to the Federal Gov- 
ernment, or to any one of its departments, the 
eflfect is to surrender all Independence on the 
part of the States, and they are forever bound 
hand and foot by the decisions of the Supreme 
Federal tribunal. The Federal Government is 
itself the creature of the States, and the Su- 
preme Court is the creature of the Federal Gov- 
ernment ; hence, to make the Supreme Court 
the final arbiter of constitutional questions, is 
to subordinate the creators to their creature's 
creature. So reasoned Jefferson and John 
Taylor of Caroline, and so believed the Re- 
publican party of their day. 

In order that I may place this matter clearly 
before you, I will read to you extracts from 
Mr. Jefferson's writings, and then I propose to 
contrast with them the more recent teachings 
of the so-called Democratic party. 

In the 9th volume of Mr. Jefferson's Works, 
at page 4G4, 1 find a series of resolutions which 
the compiler of his Works thinks were the orig- 
inal of the famous Kentucky resolutions of 
1799. The Virginia resolutions of 1798, of 
which you have heard so much, were from the 
pen of Mr. Madison ; and they are sul)stantially 
the same as those written by Mr. Jefferson for 
Kentucky. The first of these is as follows : 

" 1. Resolved, That the several States com- 
posing the United States of America are not 
united on the principle of unlimited submission 
to their General Government, but that by a 
compact, under the syle and title of a Consti- 
tution for the United States, and of amend- 
ments thereto, they constituted a General Gov- 
ernment for special purposes— delegated to that 
Government certain definite powers, reserving, 
each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to 



their own self-government ; and that whensoever 
the General Government assumes undelegated 
powers, Its acts are unauthoritative, void, and 
of no force ; that to this compact each State 
acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its 
co-States forming, as to itself, the other party ; 
that the Government created by this compact 
was not made the exclusive or final judge of 
the extent of the powers delegated to itself, 
since that would have made its discretion, and 
not the Constitution, the measure of its powers ; 
but that, as in all other cases of compact 
among Powers having no common judge, each 
party has an equal right to judge for itself as 
well of infractions as of the measure and mod§ 
of redress." 

So much for Mr. Jefferson's general view of 
the relations of the States to the Federal Gov- 
ernment. I will next read from his letters, to 
show what he thought of the Supreme Court, 
which President Buchanan and his followers 
have apotheosized since its determination of the 
Dred Scott case. 

In a letter to W. H. Torrance, dated Monti- 
cello, June 11, 1815, Mr. Jefferson says: 

" The second question, whether the judges 
are Invested with exclusive authority to decide 
on the constitutionality of a law, has been here- 
tofore a subject of consideration with me in the 
exercise of official duties. Certainly there is 
not a Avord in the Constitution which has given 
that power to them, more than to the Executive 
or Legislative branches. Questions of property, 
of character, and of crime, being ascribed to 
the judges through a definite course of legal 
procedure, laws involving such questions be- 
long, of course, to them ; and as they decide on 
them ultimately, and without appeal, they of 
course decide for fJiemselvcs. The constitution- 
al validity of the law or laws again prescribing 
Executive action, and to be administered by 
that branch ultimately, and without appeal, 
the Executive must decide Jbr themselves also, 
whether under the Constitution they are valid 
or not. So also as to the laws governing the 
proceedings of the Legislature, that body must 
judge for itself the constitutionality of the law, 
and equally without appeal or control from Its 
co-ordinate branches. And, In general, the 
branch which is to act ultimately, aud without 
appeal, on any law, is the rightful expositor of 
the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the 
opinions of the other co-ordinate authorities. 
It may be said that contradictory decisions may 
arise in such case, and produce inconvenience. 
This is possible, and is a necessary failing in 
all human proceedings. Yet the prudence of 
the public functionaries and authority of pub- 
lic opinion will generally produce accommoda- 
tion." — Jefferson's Complete Works, vol. G, pages 
G61, G62. 

It would be dllBcult to find two theories of 
the Constitution more widely different than 
this one of Jefterson, and that of President 
Buchanan, as laid down in his inaugural, his 



11 



Silliman letter, and his messages In regard to 
Kansas. But I will come to that presently. 

Ou this subject of the power of the Supreme 
Court, numbers of Mr. Jefferson's letters might 
be quoted, to the same purport as the above. 
I have only time to present brief extracts. In 
a letter to Judge Roane, dated Poplar Forest, 
September 6, 1819, he says, referring to the 
Supreme Court: 

" In denying the right they usurp, of exclu- 
sively explaining the Constitution, I go further 
than you do, if I understand rightly your quo- 
tation from the Fedei^aUst of an opinion that 
' the Judiciary is the last resort in relation to 
the other departments of the Government, but 
not in relation to the rights of the parties to 
the compact under which the Judiciary is de- 
rived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed 
is our Constitution a complete felo de se. For, 
intending to establish three departments, co- 
ordinate and independent, that they might 
check and balance one another, it has given, 
accoi'ding to this opinion, to one of them alone 
the right to prescribe rules for the government 
of the others, and to that one, too, which is un- 
elected by, and independent of, the nation." 

•JT •«■ * u rpjjg Constitution, on this hy- 
pothesis, is a mere thing of wax, in the hands 
of the Judiciary, which they may twist and 
shape into any form they please. It should be 
remembered as an axiom of eternal truth in 
politics, that whatever power in any Govern- 
ment is independent, is absolute also ; in theory 
only at first, while the spirit of the people is 
up, but in practice as fast as that relaxes. In- 
dependence can be trusted nowhere but with 
the people in mass. They are inhei'eutly inde- 
pendent of all but moral law." 

To Thomas Ritchie, whose name as the ed- 
itor of the Richmond inquirer is familiar to us 
all, Mr. Jefferson wrote, under date of Decem- 
ber 25, 1S20, as follows : 

" The Judiciary of the United States is the 
subtle corps of sappers and miners, constantly 
working under ground to undermine the found- 
ations of our confederated fabric. They are 
construing our Constitution from a co-ordina- 
tion of a general and special Government, to a 
general and supreme one alone." 

I should weary you if I were to quote a tithe 
of what Mr. Jefferson has left us on this subject. 
What I have presented will sutfice to show you 
that he entertained a deep-seated jealousy of 
Federal encroachments upon the rights of the 
States, and that he utterly repudiated the mod- 
ern doctrine of the party which claims to be 
Democratic, that the Supreme Court is the final 
arbiter of constitutional ([uestions. 

I now present the views of the modern De- 
mocracy touching these questions of constitu- 
tional power and the authority of the Supreme 
Court. I know that the President has fallen 
into disrepute with large sections of his party ; 
but, inasmuch as the sentiments advanced in 
his inaugural, in his Silliman letter, and in his 



first annual message, were universally applaud- 
ed. North and South, as the very perfection 
of human wisdom and statesmanship, I make 
bold to assume that the passages which I shall 
quote from these documents express the settled 
principles of the Democratic party. In his in- 
augural, delivered March 4, 1857, the President 
says: 

" A difference of opinion has arisen in regard 
to the point of time Avhen the people of a Terri- 
tory shall decide this question (meaning Sla- 
very) for themselves. 

" This is, happily, a matter of but little prac- 
tical importance. Besides, it is a judicial c|ues- 
tion, which legitimately belongs to the Supreme 
Court of the United States, before whom it is 
now pending, and will, it is understood, be 
speedily and finalJy settled. To their decision, 
in rummon with all good citizens, I shall cheer- 
fully submit, whatever this may be, though it 
has ever been my individual opinion that, under 
the Nebraska-Kansas act, the appi'opriate pe- 
riod will be when the number of actual resi- 
dents in the Territory shall justify the forma- 
tion of a Constitution with a view to its admis- 
sion as a State into the Union." 

Mr. Jefferson contended that the co-ordinate 
branches of the Government — that is to say, the 
Executive, the two Houses of Congress, and the 
Supreme Court — have each the right of judg- 
ing for themselves of the constitutionality of 
c|uestiows; that the States severally have the 
same right ; and that the people at large are to 
be the final arbiters. But, according to our 
modern oracle of Democracy, the people are 
bound, like obedient subjects, to submit at dis- 
cretion to the decision of the Supreme Court. 
The President sets them the example, by sur- 
rendering the Executive authority to what Mr, 
Jefferson describes as "the subtle corps of sap- 
pers and miners," who are at work night and 
day in the effort to overthrow the Constitution, 
and convert the Federal Government into a 
despotism. 

In the President's letter to Professor Silli- 
man,, dated August 15, 1857, he uses the fol- 
lowing language : " Slavery existed at that pe- 
riod, (that is to say, when the Nebraska bill 
was passed,) and still exists, in Kansas, under 
the Constitution of the United States. This 
point has at last been -finally settled, by the 
highest tribunal known to our laws.'' 

Here, again, the President sets the Supreme 
Court above the Executive, above the Congress, 
and above the people. He reiterates the senti- 
ments of his inaugural ; and the party, from 
Maine to Texas, cry amen, and denounce as 
traitors all who dare question the truth of the 
President's views. The files of the Virginia 
papers, and even those of South Carolina, fur 
two or three months after the date of this let- 
ter, teem with laudations of it, and fully en- 
dorse its ultra Federal sentiments. 

I know that whenever the States Rights prin- 
ciples of Mr. Jefferson happen to chime in with 



12 



the prevalent passion of the " Democracy" in 
those States, they are not slow to make use of 
them ; but they can never more pretend to an 
inviolable faith in and devotion to those prin- 
ciples, after endorsing these Federal heresies of 
Mr. Buchanan. 

I will read for your edification a few other 
authoritative *•' Democratic " endorsements of 
Mr. Buchanan's Federalism. The Washington 
Union has been the recognised official organ of 
the Government, representing the President 
and his Cabinet. It is rumored that this paper 
is about to change its name, for some reason ; 
but there is no ground for hope that its endorse- 
ment of the President's inaugural, or the Dred 
Scott decision, has made a change of name de- 
sirable. That journal contained a leading edi- 
torial, March 11, 1857, from which I will read 
you a few lines. It said : 

'■ There was but one thing needed to give to 
the result in the Presidential contest the force 
of an absolute and final settlement of the sec- 
tional issue. That thing was, tlie judgment of 
the Supreme Court, in confirmation of the 
Democratic doctrine, which had received the 
popular endorsement. The decision in the 
Dred Scott case has furnished the closing and 
clinching confirmation needed ; and henceforth 
sectional fanaticism cannot maintain its war- 
fare, tviihouf airai/ing itself distindli/ against 
the Constitutiony 

Shade of Jetferson ! What would that philo- 
sophic founder of the States Rights creed say 
to this? What! a Democratic organ, the organ 
of a Democratic Administration, declare it 
treason to question the validity of a Supreme 
Court decision ! 

I will not now stop to expose the assumption 
of the Union, that the people in the Presiden- 
tial election endorsed the President and his 
views, when in fact he fell short of a popular 
majority by nearly four hundred thousand. I 
let that pass for what it is worth. 

I proceed to give another high Democratic 
view of the Supreme Court and its authority. 
It is that of the late Attorney General Gushing. 
Just about the time the Supreme Court was 
about to be delivered of its famous Dred Scott 
opinion, Mr. Gushing, who had watched and 
fostered the process of gestation, was compelled 
to take official leave of that august body. As 
a member of General Pierce's Cabinet, h : »vent 
out of office with it. On surrendering ' -je seals 
of office, he addressed the court as f aows : 

" Yours is not the gauntleted hand of the 
soldier, nor yours the voice that commands ar- 
mies, rules cabinets, or leads senates. But 
though you are none of these, yet you are 
backed by all of them. Theirs is the external 
power which sustains your moral authority ; 
you are ike incarnate mind of the political body 
of the nation. In the complex institutions of 
our country, you are the pivot point upon tchich 
the rights and liberties of all, Government and 
people alike, turn ; or, rather, you arc the cen- 



tral light of constitutional tvisdom, aroxind 
ivhich they perpetually revolve.^'' 

Here, then, is modern Democracy ! Behold 
it, and contrast it with Jeffersonian Democra- 
cy! Mr. Jefferson declared that the Execu- 
tive and Congress have an equal right with the 
Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution ; 
and that the Judges of the Supreme Court are 
" the subtle corps of sappers and miners '' who 
are continually mining- for its overthrow. 

Mr. Buchanan says that the question of Sla- 
very in the Territories is not a political but a 
judicial question ; and that it having been de- 
termined finally and forever by the Court, he 
submits his judgment, as President, to that 
of the Court, and declares that all good citi- 
zens will do likewise. 

The Washington Union, the President's or- 
gan, goes a step further, and denounces all 
who dare question the validity of the decision, 
as enemies of the Constitution ; while the reti- 
ring Attorney General, with a climax of eulogy, 
tells tha Judges, in language which must have 
caused a blush to mantle in their venerable 
cheeks, that " You are the central light of con- 
stitutional wisdom, around which they (mean- 
ing Avhat Mr. Jefferson styles the co-ordinate 
departments) perpetually revolve.'' 

Well might Mr. Jefferson predict, as he did 
in a letter to the Hon. William T. Barry, of 
Kentucky, that the most disastrous consequen- 
ces to the cause of true Democracy would re- 
sult from the large Federal recruits which were 
then coming into the Democratic ranks. This 
prophetic letter is dated July 2, 1822. He 
says : 

" Whether the surrender of our opponents, 
their reception into our camp, their assumption 
of our name, and APPARENT accession to 
our objects, may strengthen or weaken the gen- 
uine principles of Republicanism, may be a 
good or an evil, is yet to be seen.'^ 

Sir, I will not undertake to say that Mr. Jef- 
ferson had his sinister forebodings turned par- 
ticularly to Pennsylvania when writing this 
letter ; but I believe it was about that time 
that an important accession was made to the 
Democracy in the vicinity of Lancaster, from 
the ranks of Federalism. To say the least of 
the matter, there is a remarkable coincidence 
of time, and a marvellous realization of the 
prediction. 

Having shown what were Mr. Jefferson's 
views upon these great questions of Slavery and 
Slates Rights, I will briefiy advert to another of 
permanent interest, on which he was most ex- 
plicit. I allude to the subject of political tol- 
erance. When he became President in ISOl, 
he found every place under the Government 
filled by his political opponents. He was op- 
posed to proscription for opinion's sake ; but at 
the same time justice must be done. It would 
not have been just to his fri^-^ds, then consti- 
tuting a majority of the nation, that their op- 
ponents should continue to monopolize all pat- 



13 



ronage, and hence many changes became neces- 
sary. He vindicates his course in a letter 
written in reply to a memorial from Connecti- 
cut, and lays down the true, humane, and states- 
manlike rule of his administration as follows. 
Adverting to the state of things just recited, he 
says : 

" It would have been to me a circumstance 
of great relief, had I found a moderate partici- 
pation of office in the hands of the majority. I 
would gladly have left fo time and accident to 
raise them to their just share. But their total 
exclusion calls for prompter corrections. I 
shall correct the procedure ; but, that done, re- 
turn with joy to that state of things when the 
only questions concerning a candidate shall be, 
Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful 
to the Constitution ? " 

Such was the golden rule of Jefferson. You 
all know how it is kept by the present Admin- 
istration. The rule now is, to require every 
office-holder to pay liberally to the Democratic 
clubs, and whoever dares refuse is immediately 
dismissed. The official organ some five or six 
months ago explicitly laid down this as the rule 
of action, and denounced all officials as drones 
who failed to comply with it, and insisted that 
they should at once be dismissed from the ser- 
vice. The test questions now addressed to ap- 
plicants for office are. Is he in favor of extend- 
ing and perpetuating Slavery ? Does he swear 
allegiance to the Supreme Court and the Dred 
Scott decision ? Will be contribute freely of 
his salary to the electioneering fund ? He who 
passes this ordeal safely, need not despair. 

Before concluding my remarks, I will address 
myself to a brief consideration of the probable 
eonsecjuences of the triumph of the Republican 
party in this country. I know that there are 
many good people, North and South, who are 
deeply anxious on this point. They fear that 
some terrible calamity, such as a dissolution of 
the Union, or civil war, will result from the 
election of a Republican President. 

I have myself given a good deal of anxious 
thought to this subject; I have endeavored to 
analyze it, and ascertain what foundation there 
is for these sinister predictions. As the result 
of my investigations, I have arrived at the con- 
clusion that they are wholly without reason or 
probability to support them. 

For, in the first place, a constitutional major- 
ity of the people of the Union have the right to 
elect a President; the Constitution defines who 
may be President; and if the man chosen by 
the constitutional majority of the people is eli- 
gible, there can be no possible objection to his 
inauguration. Whoever raises his hand against 
the inauguration of a President legally chosen, 
and eligible, is a traitor, and all good law- 
abiding peoi>lo. North and South, will sustain 
the Government in bringing him to condign 
punishment. State Rights will sustain no man 
in resisting the installation of a legally-elected 
President. So far from it, the honest champion 



of the reserved rights of the States will be 
equally tenacious of the powers granted to the 
Federal Government. 

But this idea of resisting the inauguration of 
a Republican President, which was prevalent 
in the South in 1856, and was threatened even 
by the Governor of Virginia, is no longer 
dreamed of except by a few mad-caps in the 
extreme South. On sober second thoughts, the 
wise men of the South, of the dominant party, 
have concluded to abide by the Constitution, 
and make no effort at resistance until their con- 
stitutional rights are invaded. The Opposition 
in the South, composed of old conservative 
Whigs and Americans, have never threatened 
resistance to the constituted authorities on any 
such issue. They will stand by the Government 
until the rights of the States are encroached 
upon by the Federal power. 

And here is the point. What will the Re- 
publicans do ? Will they trench upon the 
rights of the States ? 

So far as I know the sentiments of prominent 
Republicans, or of the masses, I know of no 
such purpose, and I therefore feel authorized 
to say that no such encroachment is contem- 
plated. 

What, then, will the Republican party do 
with its power ? I answer, first, it will prevent 
the extension of Slavex-y into new Territories. 
To effect this object, it may be necessary to 
legislate Slavery out of them ; or the result 
may be attained by the exercise of the moral 
influence of the Government. For a number of 
years past, this iufiuence and patronage have 
been sufficient to make the Territories, as a 
general rule, Pro-Slavery in feeling and politi- 
cal bias; and, for my part, I think it will be 
much easier to make them Anti-Slavery than 
Pro-Slavery, for the reason that Freedom is in 
itself more reasonable, beautiful, and com- 
mendable, than Slavery. But, in any event, 
the Republicans claim it to be the right and 
duty of the Federal Government to exclude 
Slavery from the public domain, by act of Con- 
gress, or by moi-al influence, operating upon 
and controlling Territorial legislation. 

In the second place, while the Republican 
party, as the States Rights party, will studious- 
ly refrain from trenching upon the reserved 
rights of the States, it will feel bound to wield 
the patronage and influence of the Federal 
Government for the promotion of sound morals, 
and the dissemination of enlightened views of 
public policy among the people. North and 
South. A Republican Administration will give 
no aid to the modern Pro-Slavery heresy in the 
South, but will endeavor to discountenance and 
supplant it by encouraging a return to the en- 
lightened, liberal, and philanthropic views of 
Washington, Jefferson, and Mailison. This 
the champions of Slavery and Disunion may 
count on ; and well they may, for it is destined 
to produce a revolution in public sentiment at 
no distant day. 



14 



The free-soil tendency In all the border slave 
States is conspicuously manifest even now. In 
Missouri, it has broken out in vigorous political 
action. It was but the other day that your city 
newspapers chronicled a splendid free-soil vic- 
tory in St. Louis, not the first, though the 
largest of its kind. All over Missouri, this free- 
soil sentiment is more or less prevalent and 
out-spoken. It is diffused through Kentucky, 
Western Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware ; and 
the triumph of the Republican party in the 
Presidential contest will be the signal for the 
grandest outburst of the pent-up hopes and as- 
pirations of the people in these States, of which 
our history furnishes any example. The people 
of the South yearn for Freedom. They are 
kept spell-bound and terror-stricken by the 
eternal hue and cry of danger to the State, kept 
up by a few interested agitators. These dema- 
gogues keep up a perpetual reign of terror at 
the South, so that no man can hope for public 
favor, or even for private respect, who refuses 
to join in it. The people look to the State 
Governments, and they find these agitators in 
power; and turning to the Federal Government, 
they find the same men or their creatures ready 
to crush every aspiration for Liberty. 

The inauguration of a Republican President 
will reverse all this. He will stretch out the 
arm of Federal influence to protect and en- 
rourage Freedom, and to build up a party of 
Freedom in every Southern State, similar to 
that which exhibits such healthy growth in 
Missouri. Who can doubt what the effect will 
be ? If Freedom is irrepressible, with all the 
weights which now oppress it, what will it not 
be when those weights are removed, and their 
influence thrown into the opposite scale ? 

I may be too sanguine, but I am willing to 
hazard the prediction, that before the end of 
the firstRepublican Presidential term, the party 
will carry the day in every one of the border 
slave States. I am equally confident that a 
Pro-Slavery party will never again enter the 
field for the Presidency, after four years of Re- 
publican rule. 

What, then? Are we to have no more parties? 
Is the millennium at hand ? Sir, I am not so 
hopeful as that. I cannot doubt that we shall 
have parties ; but the issue between them will 
no longer be Freedom or Slavery. They will 
both protest allegiance to Freedom, and will 
only dispute about the best mode of removing 
Slavery. 

Such are my views of the future. I have no 
fears of a dissolution of the Union. The South- 
ern people, sustained by the Federal Govern- 
ment, will not permit a handful of discontented, 



rule-or-ruin fire-eaters to dissolve the Union. 
Neither will they be permitted to revive that 
greatest crime which a nation ever embarked 
in — the slave trade. The laws, which brand it 
as piracy and punish it with death, will neither 
be repealed, nor suffered to sleep as they novr 
are. The whole Union is interested in putting 
an end to this infamous traSic, which threatens 
to deluge the South with African barbarism, 
drive out the white population, and Africanize 
the continent. 

Sir, we have been falsely styled Black Re- 
publicans. It is a miserable trick of dema- 
gogues to misrepresent and render us odious. 
While we are opposed to the enslavement of 
black men, we have no wish to augment the 
number among us by foreign importations, 
whether free or slave. We know that black men 
are tropical in origin and adaptation, and we 
desire to inaugurate a policy which will restore 
the black race to the tropical regions. If any 
party deserves the name of Black, it is that which 
advocates the perpetuation of black Slavery in 
these States, and which, not satisfied with the 
stock on hand, is now importing more from Af- 
rica. The Republican party, when it attains 
power, as it is destined to do at an early day, 
will put a stop to this iniquity, and it could do 
nothing better calculated to popularize itself 
south of Mason and Dixon's line. 

I now conclude, my friends, this brief tribute 
to the memory, the character, and the principles 
of Jefferson. The party which he instituted 
has fallen to decay. It abandoned his princi- 
ples, it has adopted those which he loathed, 
and, as a climax of apostacy, it has elevated to 
the Presidency a Federalist, whose first official 
declaration was to proclaim the overthrow of 
States Rights, their subordination to the Su- 
preme Court, and the universality of Slavery. 
it remains for us to rescue the memory and 
principles of Jefferson from the oblivion into 
which they are passing, and to reassert for 
them their legitimate influence upon American 
politics. 

The Washington States estimates that the 
Hall was two-thirds full. It seats eight hun- 
dred. We may add, that profound and respect- 
ful attention was given to the proceedings ; and 
what is very unusual, although there were not 
more than a dozen ladies pi'esent, the audience 
sat with uncovered heads. Those portions of 
the address denouncing the extension of Sla- 
very and the slave trade were received with 
rapturous applause. 



UBJa'12 



